


Step into the skin (and disappear)

by Razdraz



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Avengers Vol 5 Issue 29, Avengers Vol. 5 (2013), M/M, Not A Fix-It, hickmanvengers, mindwipe aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 13:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13904847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razdraz/pseuds/Razdraz
Summary: Ostensibly, Steve was here for a mission.Recon, intelligence gathering, surveillance of whatever operative they planted here to give him something to do. Really, he was in the hero equivalent of time-out while everyone figured out what to do with him.





	Step into the skin (and disappear)

**Author's Note:**

> A "what-if" of Steve not stopping after telling Tony he was going to beat him bloody. This may be confusing if you're not familiar with Hickmanvengers or the Incursion arc.

There was the steady, droning whine of a cicada in the air. The occasional gurgle from the pool filter, the staticky crinkle of a body moving against cheap plastic. It was otherwise quiet. He was floating above himself, almost - Unmoored and unworried as the blazing heat of the sun picked its way slowly from his left to right.

He might burn. There was sunscreen in the cheap towel bag Jan insisted he bring, but the thought flittered behind his eyes once and then subsided. It'd be fine.

His glass was sweating where it sat in its own water by his elbow. The too-sweet drink becoming more diluted, presumably more palatable, the longer Steve ignored it. It was the image of the thing, really. The simulated decadence. If he got the external image of peace and relaxation perfect then perhaps it would become a reality.

He saw himself from afar, from the side. His left leg shifting down, to the left. A new heat brand along his inner thigh. He relaxed. Breathed in chlorine and rusted iron and sweat.

The heat reached his right eye and he sighed, settled. 

The pitch of the cicada cycled, changed again as it picked up speed. Peter had told him once that they only woke up every seventeen years, but Steve felt like they've screamed every year since he's woken up.

There was an itch under his skin to move. The urge rose and fell in alternating, rolling waves of apathy and anxiety, but Steve held his position. He tilted his head up, exhaled, pictured himself doing this in another life. He wouldn’t be alone, for one thing. There’d be a dog barking or children screaming in delight or his spouse chatting with neighbours who knew them as bankers, but secretly thought they were part of a 3-letter agency.

He imagined himself smiling, then frowning, then beating his spouse-turned-Tony to death in front of his horrified audience. He turned his head into the sun and shivered. He’d always been a shit visionary. Tony would have called him pessimistic, but what did Tony know?

The thick blanket of light, the clear red, over both eyelids swam and crawled. He felt branded, marked, in this cheap resort in a cheap town in a state bordered by nothing. He’d been here for over a week, but time had already begun to dilate. It could have been July or August or March and the pool, the deck, the man on the lounge chair, would look exactly the same.

Ostensibly, Steve was here for a mission. 

Recon, intelligence gathering, surveillance of whatever operative they planted here to give him something to do. Really, he was in the hero equivalent of time-out while everyone figured out what to do with him.

His drink was probably fine now. Sweet, but not sickly. Chemical tasting from whatever tropical fruit it tried to emulate, but not enough to make him stop drinking. A pale pink instead of red.

He’d never been a big fan of vacations.

Tony had once coerced him into an impromptu trip to his villa on the Amalfi coast.

They’d walked into the town center with Tony acting as a self-appointed guide, charming nonni with melodic Sicilian and faux-flirting with every young woman behind a counter. He’d plied Steve with sfogliatelle and licked the cream from Steve’s lips and led him into a small grotto on the outskirts of the town. They fucked in emerald seawater while Tony whispered sweet-nothings in his ear. Steve had wanted to say  _ I love you _ and  _ marry me  _ and  _ I’m so proud of you _ , but bit hard into Tony’s neck instead and came. 

Three weeks later was Mentallo and Tony’s first foray into mental manipulation and Steve was done with reminiscing.

The sun had shifted and slid. A growing coolness along his left side to counteract line of fire on his right.

He hadn’t managed to try the pool yet. The rhythmic sloshing and gurgling of its filter was hypnotic.

It broke the continued whining of the cicadas into strange, melodic chunks. He had read once that humans were hard-wired into seeing patterns where none existed. Hearing words in white noise. It had helped in the past, apparently. Finding patterns meant noticing when the pattern broke meant noticing a predator before it noticed you.

Of course, that sometimes led people into attacking shadows and hidden allies, but it was an imperfect system.

Steve shifted his weight left, then right.

His limbs were sun-heavy and soft. The impulse to run was fading. He had a few hours left and he intended to do nothing with them.

Years ago, Steve had woken up by a poolside to Tony arguing with Hank about the virtues of epicyclic gears. The pitch of his voice revealed how little he cared about the topic, but that he didn’t want to stop. He needled and teased until the laughter turned to mollification and Steve had had to intervene.

He had picked Tony up, walked the three paces to the water’s edge and fell headlong into the water. For long moments all that existed was pressure and slick skin and a soft dissociation.

When they resurfaced the team was laughing.

Later that night Steve had held a shaking Tony and bit back useless apologies.

His drink was absolutely fine now, if precariously full. It would be refreshing, tart. The glass would be pleasantly cool and slick. He could drink deeply and sigh in time to the poolside’s song.

It was a dry heat. The demarcation between shade and sun on his body was absolute. He peered up into the light and let his vision blur.

Nine days ago he had woken up with the afterimages of the Illuminati hovering over him and slipped far away. He watched himself suit up, pick up his shield, message the others. He blinked and was in Tony’s lab. Blinked again and had bits of blood and hair and bone dripping from his gloves.

He remembered focusing on the shape of Tony’s nose and cataloging the differences. Before and after.

The puddle under his drink had grown and was now dripping onto the concrete. 

There were a number of possibilities open.

The smartest move, the cleanest, would be to shoot him twice in the back of the head and be done with it. Tony would want them to be kind, they’d say. He wouldn’t want Steve to suffer.

Tony also wouldn’t think that Steve had done anything wrong, but Tony’d been suicidal for years so his opinion on what to do with his murderer was irrelevant.

The next smartest move, the most politically useful, would be pageantry in the form of a trial. He’d plead guilty, get a slap on the wrist, and be back to leading the team in a room scrubbed clean of any blood or brain matter.

If he strained his eyes he’d be able to see a growing blur on the horizon. He didn’t.

Steve closed his eyes and waited.

  
  



End file.
